


measures.

by walrusmaterial



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Mild Angst, Perc'ahlia Festival of Happiness, Shameless Tied up With. Ribbon Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 11:37:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8142344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walrusmaterial/pseuds/walrusmaterial
Summary: Percy is trying to be a Good Person. Vex is trying to make her best Memories of him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for the prompt: "Percy/Vex cooking/baking and then it devolves into a food fight with flour everywhere." for Tumblr user bilsunderooks. 
> 
> [...also, first fic I have ever posted for this fandom, these nerdy ass Voice Actors playing D&D have made me do many things.]

Vex tries to have good memories of her mother.

She was indisputably a Good Person, and Vex is guiltlessly happy when Vax tells her she has their mother’s nose, right in the center of her face. That's as good a heirloom as any of the things she has in her back pockets, but she's sitting on the counter in the de Rolo’s expansive kitchen in nothing but her nightgown, and reaching inside herself for some last vestige of resolve is most definitely beyond her.

Percy is crouched low to the ground and hunting through the pantry, making tutting noises with his mouth as he blows air and spit through the gap between his top front teeth. She hadn't noticed it for the longest time, but her tongue is sharper than her eyes and she liked the sensation sometimes, sliding the tip of it over that little crack when they kissed. His pajamas look almost uncomfortably tight, the buttons holding the back flap closed straining as the muscles in his ass shift his weight.

Resolve is not going to be the silent guest in their temple, or however the inscription on the side of Pelor’s shrine says it.

Percy has fired up the oven, which hisses and burns brightly across from where Vex is swinging her feet, spitting out columns of benign and ashy smoke. She's supposed to be manning the poker and shoving at the coals, not admiring Percy’s broad shoulders and the practiced grace with which he lifts a crate from the cupboard and brings it to rest upon the counter beside her.

“Here we go, the yeast was there, behind the eggs. We only need about… two teaspoons of this for everything, but it's good to know we have quite the supply-”, he's talking- pouring flour and syrups and sugars and flour into corresponding containers with his Tinkerer’s eyes, serious and calculating even as his sleeves run white with flour and cold molasses sludge blackens his wrists in droplets. Percy swings a stout basket in the crook of his elbow, holding inside it the six eggs he had collected from the de Rolo preserves earlier in the morning.

He’s humming to himself and when he looks up at Vex, his hair looks Fluffy, like Trinket after a long nap, like she would lose her hands running them through it. He looks like lining up to bake cookies is the pinnacle of Life Itself. Percy gets so excited, and she loves that this side of him is hers alone. Percy, she knows, can always hold himself back behind the veneer of his nobility, and the restraints of his breeches while she is peeling them off carefully to tease him. But rarely, and Just for Vex, oh- he is free and his cheeks are red and she falls disparate bits closer and closer to completely in love with him.

Like today, when she eases herself off the counter, forcing down the ticker at her center that counts the moments before the hourglass will flip, and she will be counting down to times like these instead. Vorugal still looms, a blank canvas she aches to splatter with the dragon’s own gore, and she is standing beside Percy, her bare feet growing warm in the glow of the oven as he licks sugar from his thumb.

“What would you like, Vex’ahlia?”, he asks, his teeth still nibbling on the pad of his finger. “Pastries are the obvious choice, but we can also make biscuits, the best to take with us on the road, or perhaps some rolls? There’s venison we can smoke in the storehouse and it's wonderful with rolls and some of this tea which Cassandra swears is made by the Gods-”

She scoffs, despite herself like she would know the difference. Vex enjoys Finery, especially those in which she can't partake. She isn't too bad off of a cook, but it's more that food will all taste bitter on her tongue regardless, and wasting Percy’s Excitement is a battering ram upon that resolve she's trying to keep standing.

“Pastries are too sweet, Percy.”, she settles for telling him, and Percy shakes his head.

“We can die, dear. We should hope to be indulgent before then.”

He pauses, and cocks his head, the locks of his hair having gone too long without a proper shave, brushing his collarbone where he has popped open the buttons of his pajamas just under his neck. “So, the cookies? Unbelievably, Scanlan’s...spice is wonderful with some ginger. I had read of a recipe and always wanted to try-”

“Percy.”

“Yes?”

“I don't really mind what we're going to be making.” Her weight shifts uncomfortably on the balls of her feet. “I...just never learned how to bake, you know- the servants were always...responsible for that in my father’s house and I was too young before, so- it doesn't matter, really. We can make whatever you would like.”

Her speech is far too quick, halting and awkward and her resolve cracks, breaking gracelessly as he turns to fix her with the kind of look that tells her she has not hidden the meaning of this well enough. Percy’s glasses are steam-fogged, and he reaches up, his sleeve brushing her cheek as he moves to fold them into the placket of his pajamas.

“Why didn't you just say so? It’s very simple, like chemistry. We'll start with...ah, these pastilles, I think you'll like them.”, he says with a small chuckle. “We are, after all, in a time of unrestrained indulgence.”

He drops a kiss to the side of her forehead, where her eyes roll upwards to meet him, grinning. One corner of his mouth twitches up, against his warm, pink cheeks, and he reaches for a torn roll of parchment, tacked to the cabinet doors above them. This is new to him as it is to her, for such luxuries to come so easily when every part of them is standing at war.

“Here, Vex. Take the kettle. First, we’ll need to melt the butter-”

It's a lie, of course, that she never learned to bake, but it's in the interest of Trying To Have Good Memories of Her Mother she keeps her mouth set in a straight, diligent line, letting Percy point her to the proper measures, letting his hands brush over hers when they reach for equal measures of the same things, pretending that she doesn't notice how he brings the cups and basins up closer to his face without his glasses, checking on the exact proper distributions of sugars and eggs.

The kitchen smells sweet when he begins to mix the batter, and she is up on her toes, sprinkling yeast into the swirl of cinnamon at the center of their basin.The oven smoke has made both of them hazy, leaning into one another and touching, perhaps both willing and not quite intentionally, his hand resting at her hip where she has pulled herself into his side, and she is warm, bubbling and frothy. She doesn't really want to move away, but she lets Percy disentangle himself, to place their tray inside the oven and hoist himself up on the counter opposite her.

He’s all excited again, he's talking nonsense to distract them both and the memory is one which comes wafting from the scent of ginger, finely shredded, melting together with powdery flour and a sprinkle of clean, white sugar.

 

* * *

 

Vex is nine, it is winter again in their sleepy township, the season of sewing patches into last year’s boots, taking down the hems of the cloaks which she and her brother share, and huddling for warmth beside the oven, her little family sleeping in shifts, armed with the poker to break up errant coals that could start a fire.

She has always felt warm between her mother and her brother, and craves their sleep for how their mother sings when her eyes have half-closed, like Vex is the most important thing in her world, and how Vax wraps himself around her like he will never be able to let her go. It's a stark contrast to the waking world, where she finds herself alone terrifyingly often, where now she is sitting at their kitchen table, sprawled across its knotty wooden tabletop after they had sold the chairs for coal for the winter.

Her mother kisses the messy knot at the top of Vax’s head, and mutters over him like a spell, “Look at you, my talented boy, I think you're going to be making potions someday, Vax’ildan. A shop in the square, maybe? Imagine that!”

He lights up from within like she's done magic for real, and all he's done to earn this is pouring beaten eggs from measure to measure, mixing it with flour and sugar that have cost so much that they will still be in debt for the eggs even if her brother does grow up and sell potions. But, to learn so would take costly books and a trip to a real school, not the floor of a kindly woman who thinks it's necessary all children know how to read and write.

Luckily, she is also teaching them how to add, and Vex picks up on the mechanics of subtraction all on her own, when the men from town come to pick up she and Vax’s bed, and they are left sleeping all together with their mother, and Vex learns that she likes her family better sleeping than awake. That's addition, or perhaps division? Her mother is so impressed by all of these words that she's bought Vex her secret gift, the notebook with three big spaces that follow her eyes up and down like a list.

The space at the very edge of the pages is supposed to be to put the totals, so she counts them in rough marks of a slab of sharp charcoal scraping her fingers. The middle, is supposed to be for the subtractions and then there is a new space, closest to the spine to put what you got in exchange for the subtraction, which is really quite cool because there isn't a mathematical word for it.

There is no space to note that 40 silver is halved if she leans forward for a lewd shopkeeper, but then she is too young then to know what he wanted to see if not the ribbon in her hair, which is a precious yellow that shines like gold in the right light. She marks the margin beside the crate of eggs she had gotten with a little star, and underneath it, writes yellow.

He must be a good man to sell special prices, to girls with yellow ribbons.

Vax and their mother are dripping wet, creamy batter in dollops on to a slab of metal, her brother’s tongue darts out from his mouth to lick at the ladle, and their mother lightly flicks his small hand away from the bowl. Their tunics are dusted with flour and the air tastes of sugar powder, impossibly light even when it makes her sneeze as she sits up to close her book. The two of them glance over at her, their matching frosted grins pressing down hard on an ache that hadn't bothered her in a while.

She turns her gaze downwards as quickly as they turn away to attend to the oven. Their pastries bake, and their mother sits up on the table with her, Vax’s head in her lap while she is braiding his unruly hair. She tells a story which Vex thinks she likes, which she cannot put into any column in her book. She leans deeper into her brother's side, enjoying the feeling of his chest against hers, rumbling with laughter, and the scent of spices on his skin.

He darts off the table and pulls the pastries from the oven, and when Vax shoves a crumbly one in her mouth, she smiles as bits of it roll down her chin, flicking the dried fruit baked into its center back at her brother. Their mother watches them as though she doesn't not spend most of her time brooding over their futures that already overtaken in dusk.

Her little family makes enough subtractions, perhaps there isn't room left to divide her into the connection between Vax and her mother, but she likes to see them happy.

She can't be anything less than that for them.

 

* * *

 

“- of course they've come out very well. I don't know if we still have the other sugar, for the frostings, but I think-”, Percy has paused, the baking sheet held in one gloved hand, still sparking with steam around its sides, to taste-test their creation. He neatly hides how Vex knows his tongue has been burnt, and she smirks, jumping from the counter to meet him and nibble at the cooling end of the pastry that hangs from his mouth.

The wafer crumbles between them and leaves his sweetened lips within kissing distance, if not for the pesky tray that Percy swings around her with urgency.

“Careful, Pike’s not here.”, he teases, brushing his lips just barely across her forehead when he passes.

“Oh, I could take some damage from a very certain and very handsome man.”, she’s giggling, trailing after him to the counter where Percy lays out the tray.

“That's exactly what we’re trying to keep from happening, dear.”

“Percy…”

“That isn't what I meant.”, he shakes his head, and flour dust clouds his eyes in a mist that settles on his shoulders. A ghost of a smile betrays his intention, but Vex is far too concentrated on the pastry that melts in her mouth, surprised by its satisfying crunch, and a soft, thin center filling her mouth with warmth when Percy makes his attack.

She feels the cold sheet come down her back before she realizes what it is, and white powder has sifted to a small mountain at her feet before she whirls backward and sees Percy there, having emptied half a sack of flour on what Vex is assured must be a comical expression that crosses her face.

“Percy- My- hair…!”, is all she can think to sputter, the flour still clouding around her enough to make her try in vain to stifle a sneeze.

“I don't have that problem.”

He is raking a hand through his hair, still too thick for how stark white it is, when her eyes snap open, and in his hand, he has scraped up the dredges of their batter and smears it altogether too gleefully against her lips.

“You see, you wouldn't be so happy if you were in pain.”

Vex turns away, flicking the flour from her shoulders where she senses him, thick arms and sure hands that pull her into his side.

“This isn't part of...baking!”, she appeals to his reason, and smacks a dusty hand against his chest, burying her nose in his shoulder to shield herself from the frothy cloud she raises. Batter smears in the fabric of his pajamas and she hopes he won't mind.

“No. This is tradition. We've finished baking.”

“This is an extraordinarily strange tradition, Percival.”, she teases him, angling up to where his tongue is waiting, nipping at her lips still frosted with the remains of their pastries.

“My parents used to- oh, and it made the servants so angry...I don't remember it well, but, it seemed like a proper thing to do-”, he murmurs against her, lapping up the mess he has left on her cheeks. “You seemed a bit tense, a moment ago, I noticed.”

“Ah. Percy. Don't mind that.”

“Don't want to talk about it?”

“I don't even want to think about it.”, Vex chuckles, meeting his eyes when she rubs away the splattered mess from his cheeks with the side of her thumb, pressing their bodies closer into an embrace.

Percy is trying to be a Good Person.

Vex is trying to make her best Memories of him.


End file.
